Modernise your IT Infrastructure in five steps - Gartner

IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders frequently start their bimodal IT infrastructure modernisation efforts backwards, by spending on new — usually Mode 2 — technology and talent before properly assessing, rationalising and simplifying their existing assets and systems, which are often in Mode 1.

Organisations at this stage have a highly inefficient infrastructure marked by random server proliferation, where systems have been added in a siloed way to meet the ad hoc needs of business units or particular workloads.

I&O leaders should begin addressing this by taking a detailed inventory of assets.

Once complete, they have the necessary information to start a process of consolidation and rationalisation.

“Consolidation is a reduction in the number of physical servers, while rationalisation is the reduction of the variety of different server types. Both are important aspects of simplifying IT infrastructure, yet rationalisation is often overlooked even though most complex IT systems include underutilised or inappropriate systems,” says Dawson.

“Consolidating without rationalising simply perpetuates unnecessary functions in a less complex infrastructure,” he adds.

Step 2: Develop common management tools and processes

When unnecessary assets have been removed, it’s a good time to implement a common management of the entire IT infrastructure, including the software-defined network, compute infrastructure, and storage.

This should be straightforward and can enable the measurement of success of all subsequent steps.

Step 3: Reduce the number of common locations across an infrastructure

At this point, opportunities to reduce the number of physical locations in the IT infrastructure will emerge, which should reduce real-estate costs, as well as further simplify management and sourcing.

Often this will involve data centre relocation or re-examining provisions for lights out operations and remote office/branch office.